Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70445 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“Let what happen?”
“This.” He kisses me again. “I’ve avoided this for a really long time, but now, I think I’m falling for you.”
“You think?” I ask as a thrill runs down my spine. I just confessed to watching my cousin die and not trying to help her, and he confessed to at least two murders, and all I can think about is him loving me. That’s sick and twisted, and I can’t bring myself to care, because War’s like me, he wraps himself in stories and lies to keep the terrible things he’s done as far away as possible, and I want him in my life. I want him, and I’m falling for him too, and I don’t know where this can possibly end.
“I know.” He leans into another kiss and we hold it there, two killers, two sinners, two liars.
The door to the main house opens. I break off the kiss and look back at Daisy appears, pushing my father in a wheelchair.
I stand suddenly in surprise. My father looks emaciated, shrunken, barely sitting upright, but his eyes are lucid. He stares at me with a cold, calculating squint. War twists in his seat before climbing to his feet, and the look on Daisy’s face sends a cold horror into my toes.
She looks triumphant.
“Colton,” Daisy says, “why don’t you tell your daughter what you just told me?”
Dad clears his throat. “I didn’t want it to come to this,” he says. “I wanted you to come home, Melody.”
“What’s going on?” War asks. “Did you mention your little attack last night, Daisy?”
She ignores him. “Go on, Colton. Tell Melody what you told me about Warren here.”
I take a step back. War goes very still, his face flattening into nothing. The anger’s gone, the surprise is gone. The love and tenderness is gone. It’s drained and emotionless, and that scares me more than anything else.
“Warren’s been working for me,” Dad says. “I sent him to bring you home. I offered to pay him to keep you here.”
“I knew all that already,” I say looking from Dad to Daisy to War and back around again.
“Tell her the rest,” Daisy presses. “Go on, Colton. Doesn’t your daughter have a right to know?”
“The ranch is everything,” Dad says and sounds so defeated it breaks my heart. I’ve never seen him like this, shriveled and weak and small. “It’s all I ever loved. I hoped if you returned and set down roots, then maybe it might turn around.”
“But that won’t happen,” Daisy says. “She told me already. Over and over again. She’s not interested in staying.”
“I offered Warren a deal,” Dad says and struggles to sit up straight. “I told him to bring you back. I told him to keep you here. I told him to convince you to marry him, and then he could inherit everything I have left. He’d get you, and the ranch, and the rest of our money, if only he could marry you and convince you to take over.”
I blink rapidly and slowly look at War.
His face reveals nothing. He’s staring at Daisy, staring at her like he’s never seen her before. I don’t know what he’s thinking but everything clicks into place—the missing piece of the puzzle slots down and fits perfectly, and now it all makes sense.
This is why War wanted to bring me home. And wanted to keep me here. And wanted to kiss me, and confess his love for me, and seduce me. It was a game from the start, from the very start. He was manipulating me like Daisy’s been manipulating everyone else, and a sick horror swells in my guts, churning in my soul.
“Was any of it true?” I whisper.
He slowly looks at me. “All of it.”
“Liar.” I turn my back on him.
“Now you get it,” Daisy says with unfettered glee. “This whole time you were being manipulated. You think I’m the bad guy here, but your own father dragged you home under false pretenses and tried to trick you into getting married. I mean, god, how sick is that?” She laughs and I stare at my father, but he only sinks down into himself, defeated, the big man I knew now totally gone, the cowboy disappeared, leaving behind this husk. This shell of a person.
“Why?” I ask, my voice almost a whisper, and I’m not sure who I’m talking to.
But Dad answers. “Because you’re the only one that loves this place as much as I do.”
“Not anymore,” I say and take a step back.
“Go home, Melody,” Daisy says. “Forget about the ranch.” She turns my father away and wheels him back inside. The door closes behind them and I stand there in shaky silence. War doesn’t move, and I don’t move, and I don’t know what to do. My mind’s racing, spinning in a thousand directions, but one thing is eminently clear.